Fresh as a daisy? Checking the health of trees

Thermal images provide evidence of whether a tree is damaged – a precise inspection for ensuring public safety.

The safety in parks, on paths and in the forest must be ensured by either the owners or the public administration responsible for the area. Their legal duty of care includes assessing the trees' health condition professionally in order to be able to take the necessary measures. If it turns out that a tree is heavily damaged, it must be removed as quickly as possible to avoid endangering passers-by. Using infrared technology, the health condition of trees can be determined in a fast, inexpensive and reliable way. For this reason, public authorities and facility managers have been using thermal imaging cameras from Trotecfor performing regular health checks of the tree stock.

Owners of forest areas and parks open to the public bear a great responsibility. After all, they are legally bound to meet their duty of care. Besides maintaining the paths and removing sources of danger such as black ice or snow, they also have to examine their stock of trees at regular intervals. This is because trees often represent a hidden danger for passers-by. Dead branches or entirely diseased, rotten trees may fall down or tilt due to a gust of wind. In the event of heavy wind, public parks are often closed for safety reasons and warning signs are put up at the access paths to forest areas. To contain the risks posed by diseased trees, regular inspections are carried out during which the condition of the trees is thoroughly examined. For assessing the health of trees, experts usually make use of binoculars and visually inspect every tree first of all. Using a hammer, they tap the trunks, branches and parts of the root system to identify cavities. It goes without saying that this method is not only time-consuming but also costly. Moreover, its safety also depends on the sound judgement and assessment of the examiner.

Identifying diseased trees in good time

A quick and cost-efficient method for examining the health of trees is infrared technology. Therefore, experts working on the order of public authorities as well as facility managers are increasingly using thermal imaging cameras for checking the health condition of tree stocks. Healthy trees exhibit a uniform heat distribution over the entire surface of the tree since the cells are properly interconnected and the water is properly distributed. However, if parts of the wood are rotten, the heat can no longer be distributed evenly. Such parts become visible on thermal images. As this type of inspection neither requires peeling off the bark nor taking a sample, the examined tree remains completely intact. Hence, using one of the modern thermal imaging cameras from Trotec, experts and facility managers cannot only quickly determine where measures for protecting passers-by are required. The cameras also help to reduce the number of trees being logged for reasons of precaution as a thermal imaging inspection also provides evidence of the good health condition of a tree.

Precise measurements, reasonable price

The health status of trees can be checked using, for instance, the infrared cameras of the EC series from Trotec. The thermal imaging camera EC060V provides detailed and razor-sharp thermal images in next to no time. These images reveal diseased spots on trees and thus allow experts to decide whether the entire tree or only individual branches have to be removed in order to meet the duty of care. The innovative image sensor with a detector resolution of up to 160 x 120 measuring spots and a thermal sensitivity of 0.08 degrees Celsius visualizes even small temperature deviations. And thanks to the high image refresh rate, the thermal images are constantly displayed in real time.

Detailed assessment

To be able to document the health condition of a tree stock in a detailed manner, the thermal imaging camera EC060V offers several measuring functions and an automatic measurement control. For an improved visualization, infrared and real images can be superimposed. This way, the thermal imaging measurement results can be assessed thoroughly after the inspection and presented to the customer or authority.

Renting rather than buying

For temporary application – e.g. when examining a park after a thunderstorm and lightning strikes – we recommend you to rent a camera. Trotec's thermal imaging cameras are also available in the TKL rental portal – at a reasonable price.